This section provides background information related to the present disclosure and is not necessarily prior art.
A food waste disposer may be mounted underneath a sink to receive liquid and food waste that passes through a drain of the sink. The food waste disposer may grind the food waste into particles that are small enough to be passed through a plumbing system connected to the drain without clogging or otherwise damaging the plumbing system.
A typical food waste disposer may include a food conveying section, a motor section and a central grinding section disposed between the food conveying section and the motor section. The food conveying section conveys the food waste to the central grinding section. The grinding section typically has a shredder plate that is rotated relative to a stationary grind ring by an electric motor of the motor section. The motor has a rotor having a rotatable shaft coupled to the shredder plate. The electric motor can be an induction motor or any other suitable type of motor, such as a brushless motor, universal motor, or switched reluctance motor, for example.
A batch-feed food waste disposer, as opposed to a continuous-feed food waste disposer, operates by grinding a discrete quantity of food waste before more food waste can be inserted into the food waste disposer. That is, a user may fill the disposer with a quantity or batch of food waste, then at least partially block the drain opening with an activation member or stopper before a motor of the disposer can be operated to grind the food waste in the manner described above. Removing the activation member from the drain opening will deactivate the motor and will allow the user to insert a subsequent batch of food waste into the disposer and repeat the above process. Examples of switch assemblies for a batch-feed food waste disposer are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,500,626 for “Switching Mechanism for a Batch Feed Waste Disposer” issued Mar. 10, 2009 and in U.S. Pat. No. 7,757,981 for “Switching Assembly for a Batch Feed Waste Disposer” issued Jul. 20, 2010. The entire disclosures of these two patents are incorporated herein by reference.